Friday, December 23, 2016

(Ankara) It appears that the culling of the armed forces by the Turkish pocket dictator these past 4 months has degraded its ability to operate. Which kinds of explains why the Turks, with the largest standing army in the region, are making such a bloody mess of invading Syria and removing the hornets nest of ISIS. First of all, who the hell sends in basic main battle tanks, unchanged since the 1970s, into a war zone where the weapon of choice is the anti-tank missile (ATM). Not only that but when you use armour, you defend those assets with infantry, and in turn the armour supports the infantry. Add the advantage of air-support and the Turks should have made it to the Jordanian border by now.

Of course the real reason for going into Syria has nothing to do with ISIS, but rather to prevent the Kurds from linking up their western and eastern enclaves. But the fact remains, the strategic ability of the Turkish military has been emasculated by the midget in charge who sees himself as the latest in a long line of Islamic despots, who feels he is the the latest incarnation of Saladin to take to the stage.

Kurds/Turks/ISIS/Syria

But like Hitler and Stalin found out in the past, being a thug on the political arena does not make you into a brilliant military general. So with loss after loss to the primarily infantry based ISIS bigots, the Turks have just seen their worse day in battle resulting in the capture of at least 4 German made Leopard 2A4 tanks (the most advanced tank in the Turkish inventory at the moment, which were only sent in after the Turks started losing lots of armour to ATMs) during an attempt to block the Kurds from joining up by trying to take the town of Al Bab, the death of a large number of Turkish troops and the public immolation of 2 Turkish soldiers by ISIS.

The Kurds have taken more land from ISIS than anybody else. They have no tanks, no aircraft and very few heavy weapons, they have simply taken the fight to ISIS by using superior infantry tactics. The Turks, missing a lot of their upper echelon, are trying to use a huge sledgehammer in which to crack the ISIS nuts and are playing it very badly by missing the target. I mean come on, how the hell do you physically lose 4 tanks and a number of APCs to a bunch of infantry based thugs?